Google: 'We Censor Us Too?'

Symmetry is everything.

Get It Try It

Place a new web page online anywhere. Wait five minutes. Check Google. Odds are you'll already find it indexed. Unless you're in China.

Brin/Page/Schmidt's insatiable thirst for everything about you at any cost seems unquenchable. But ironically they're rather selective about what they give you back.

The recent brouhaha over the trojan quality of Google Earth for OS X created a lot of blog chatter and headlines. The story was also carried by Slashdot.

Now suppose you're concerned about the security and privacy issues with Google Earth - that you want to know what this latest Google brouhaha is all about. Try searching for the story at Google News.

http://news.google.com/news?q=Google+Earth

Go One Better

Now go one better - even the mighty Googles make mistakes from time to time, right? Well hardly. But let's play along anyway - and search for the Slashdot story directly. Click below and see what you get.

http://news.google.com/news?q=Google+Earth+site:slashdot.org

Look Again!

But the story definitely exists. Of course it does.

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/06/1510228

And it turns up in Slashdot's own search results too. Of course it does.

http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=Google+Earth

And yes if you know the exact title of the Slashdot piece you can find it over 800 times at Google - but at Google Web and not Google News. If you don't know the exact title you'll come up rather empty handed.

All you'll find are the typical shill pieces written by the conscionable mainstream media.

Bottom Google Line

The story will turn up at Google Web for a specific site search at Slashdot - but nowhere else. Not without the full title of the Slashdot piece.

Perhaps it's just because the mainstream media find such issues too intellectually taxing? Perhaps it's something else - something murkier, something outright - evil?

At the end of the day it comes down to this.

The Googles regard everything about you as their own property.

The Googles regard everything about themselves as their own property.

For the Googles symmetry is everything.